[I]n the past three decades, up to the 2007-2008 crisis, the growth of the big 4 on the European continent – France, Germany, Italy, and Spain – continued to be driven by advances external to their economies, mainly (but not exclusively) advances made in the United States. Thus, the degree of these economies’ catch-up with the American economy was not powered by a great rebirth of the indigenous innovation that was visible in continental Europe from about the 1870s to the 1930s. The corporatist economies must have come close to catching up with the American economy mainly by imitation. If growth relied on outside forces, by the way, the same is true of employment. A total cessation of American innovation would have sent the Continent into a long slump.